An editing masterpiece, an epic day, lots of great filming, but also diffused and imperfect

Rating: 7/10 (12 November 2012)

The Longest Day (1962)
This is an ambitious movie, extremely well photographed, filled with stars and secondary actors of fame and talent. And it covers roughly at 24 hour period leading up to and into the epic and dramatic June 6, 1944 invasion of German-held France known as D-Day.
On all these levels, the movie almost has to succeed. And it does. It's a popularizing account of an important event. It's history made simple, for sure, but it compresses the complexity with good intentions, and with some fair handling of both the German and non-German sides of the battles, inside and war rooms and on the beach.
The movie is filled, however, with so many characters (maybe fifty who are given enough camera time to take on some small meaning, though the poster advertises "42 International Stars") and shot in so many locations (Germany, France, London, on boats, on beaches, in villas, by the bridge, in the bunker, in the strategic commands, along the roads, flying overhead, on and on) it is truly impossible to engage in any one part of it fully. Many scenes are superb, even short ones, sometimes with great actors like Robert Ryan playing with a light on his face (in a comic scary way) and sometimes with unknowns who for a moment shine in their terror. But it's necessarily fragmented and dispersed.
There are, furthermore, attempts at humor that are a welcome break to the seriousness but are sometimes too silly and improbable to really make sense. It's like the humor that perks up little moments in a Chris Nolan Batman movie--except this is real life, this is the real D-Day and not an entertainment. You don't expect a documentary, exactly, but the levity--even if as cute as a young Sean Connery goofing on the beach as bullets fly around--is a bit off target.
The fact that this kind of movie works this well is probably amazing. It even got divided between different directors, and so the unifying qualities show a kind of logistical planning that paid off. (There are only two cinematographers and, crucially, one editor.) And of course there is history holding it together.
And this is a history that is getting lost. Fans of WWII movies (or of WWII history) will have no trouble feeling the grand, world-changing nature of D-Day. I grew up on American movies and around my parents and grandparents who had strong feelings about the war and about D-Day in particular. But young people, like the students in my classes at college, often born fifty years after the fact, have sometimes not even heard of D-Day. Many don't know a Nazi from RAF officer, even in concept. (I'm not kidding. I ask, routinely.) This is just life. Blame education if you want, but it's a natural movement forward to more recent and still living world events. We had D-Day, they have 9-11.
I watched the movie with my girlfriend who is not from the States, and who knew only the outline of the war. (Her country wasn't involved in it enough to make a dent on its own history.) And so she watched with a kind of dulled boredom. The cameos by famous people were fun for both of us, and filming was to be appreciated, but the drama I felt even with the opening credits I saw was dependent on knowing the larger scope.
And so this movie will have a shrinking audience and shrinking appreciation over time. It's a long watch--three hours--and it has a steady stream of great moments. But it's not a great movie in movie-making terms. Exciting and important and with a wikipedia page to make this all clear, but it's unlikely to fully integrate and take total form as a whole.